Tag: EDUCATION

Pebble Donates Watches To Engineering Schools

Posted on by Lab Team

In an effort to expand the functionality of its smartwatch, Pebble announced its new project aimed at getting the watch and its SDK into the hands of engineering students by donating over 4,000 units to universities like Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Standford, Virginia Tech, and others.  Right now, the market for smartwatches is still made up of early adopters, but by encouraging development of apps via their official SDK, Pebble, a frontrunner in the space, could potentially make the watches attractive to a more mainstream audience.  Only time will tell what comes of increased developer traction for the platform, but Pebble is looking like a strong competitor.

LinkedIn Partners With Education Firms

Posted on by Lab Team

LinkedIn announced that it’s partnering with seven of the biggest online education firms to let users add online certifications and courses to their LinkedIn profiles. The program, called Direct-to-Profile Certifications, takes academic accomplishments out of traditional, post-graduate University settings and into the digital realm. The details of the course are published onto your profile through the education firm itself, so ideally faking these credentials isn’t easy. LinkedIn claims that this is the first step in allowing users to keep their profiles updated, so expect to see LinkedIn continuing to expand its third-party updating and certification capabilities. 

Makerbot Aims To Put A 3D Printer In Every American School

Posted on by Lab Team

3D printing has been touted (in big block letters, no less) as THE FUTURE (of everything) for some time now, and Makerbot, an American leader in the consumer 3D printing sphere is ready to make the push towards this reality by placing a Makerbot in every school in America.  The effort is being funded by a crowd funding campaign at DonorsChoose.org. Makerbot CEO Bre Pettis calls Makerbot “manufacturing education in a box,” which hints at the greater ambitions of the presently small 3D printing industry.  If Makerbot achieves its goal and places a printer in every school in America, could we be headed for a greater shift, leading to a full industrial revolution that forever changes how we think about making products?

See IPG Lab’s Makerbot in action, currently making a turkey head (’tis the season): http://instagram.com/p/gYGwQBoeYp/